This Is Why Trump Surged (And How He Might Collapse)

Though pundits are
still struggling to understand it, the rise of Donald Trump shouldn’t
have surprised anyone. For the pioneering German sociologist Max
Weber (1864-1920), it would have been entirely predictable, a classic
example of the politics of charisma.

Weber posited that
modern political systems are normally rational and bureaucratic.
They are managed by trained professionals who deliver public services
according to a set of clear rules. They should operate like a
reliable machine – an “iron cage,” as Weber put it.

But what if the
machine breaks down? What if securities regulators fail to prevent a
financial meltdown, if hospital administrators fail to deliver
services that veterans have earned, if border guards (in both America
and Europe) fail to staunch an influx of migrants, if diplomats fail
to stop chaos in the Middle East, if economic planners fail to revive
a stalled economy? Weber assumed that bureaucrats were disinterested
career civil servants, but now they commonly do favors for the
corporations they are supposed to regulate, and are then rewarded
with executive jobs with the same corporations. What if the iron
cage becomes a revolving door?

Then there is a
crisis of public confidence in the governmental machine, and citizens
will seek the polar opposite of a bureaucrat – a charismatic
leader. As Weber defined them, “ ‘natural’ leaders – in
times of psychic, physical, economic, ethical, religious, political
distress – have been neither officeholders nor incumbents of an
‘occupation.’ ” They are antiestablishment inspirational
figures driven by a kind of divine (or diabolical) madness.

“In contrast to
any kind of bureaucratic organization of offices,” Weber wrote,
“the charismatic structure knows nothing of a form or of an ordered
procedure of appointment or dismissal.” (It simply proclaims,
“You’re fired.”) The leader “knows of no abstract codes and
statutes” (the Fourteenth Amendment, for instance). “Charisma
knows only inner determination,” ruling by declarations of personal
will. If the iron cage falls apart, charisma builds a fence along
the Mexican border.

Make a list of
charismatic figures in history (Napoleon, Lenin, Hitler, Churchill,
de Gaulle, Mussolini, Huey Long, Eugene McCarthy) and it becomes
apparent that they can assume any ideological color. They may be
good or evil, philosophers or buffoons, romantics or scam artists.
But they have several common denominators.

They all arise in
times of crisis: revolution, war, economic or social upheaval. At
these ruptures, when conventional politics seems hopelessly
inadequate, these mavericks crash the established party system.
Churchill switched parties twice. De Gaulle was an army man who
proclaimed himself “above parties.” Lenin, Mussolini, and Hitler
created their own radical movements, which abolished other parties.
Huey Long and Eugene McCarthy challenged incumbent presidents of
their own party. So whenever Trump swerves from GOP orthodoxy, he
alienates loyal Republicans but wins over voters who are disgusted
with both parties.

Some charismatic
leaders talk pernicious nonsense, but they all portray themselves as
courageous truth-tellers, saying openly what mealy-mouthed
politicians dare not speak. Without inhibition, they broadcast what
they really feel about the rich, the Jews, Hitler, Vichy
collaborators, the Vietnam War, or illegal immigrants. This strategy
renders them gaffe-proof: some listeners are outraged, but many
others find them inspiringly honest.

Where bureaucrats
collect salaries and politicians solicit campaign contributions,
Weber argued that “charisma quite deliberately shuns the possession
of money and of pecuniary income per se.” The charismatic
leader may be a St. Francis committed to poverty, or he may be “a
pirate genius” who has already stolen all the money he will ever
need. Either way, he impresses his followers because he seems to
have no mercenary motives. St. Francis and Donald Trump have only
one quality in common, but it is crucially important: neither can be
bought.

Charisma is the
politics of magic. Individuals possess it only so long as they defy
rational calculations and work miracles (the conquest of Europe is a
perennial favorite). In 1940, when most Frenchmen were ready to quit
fighting, de Gaulle appointed himself their leader and led them back
to the resurrection of France. Churchill kept the British people in
the war by convincing them that they were holding out against
impossible odds. The victories of Donald Trump are considerably less
heroic but equally astonishing, and therein lies his appeal. He
leads in the polls because no one ever expected him to lead in the
polls.

Charisma evaporates
when the magic ends, when there are no more crises or miracles, and
politics reverts to what Weber called “routinization.” Churchill
electrified the British people during the Blitz of 1940, but when he
stood for election at the close of the war, the old soaring rhetoric
no longer worked. Clement Attlee, leader of the opposition Labour
Party, had all the charisma of an insurance salesman, but he promised
the voters an efficiently administered welfare state, and they swept
him into Ten Downing Street. De Gaulle rallied the French people
when they were occupied by the Germans – but in 1968, when he had
given them a stable, affluent Fifth Republic, they rose up in revolt.
Lenin’s ruthless leather-jacketed Bolsheviks seized control of
Russia – but they ultimately morphed into Brezhnev’s paunchy
apparatchiks in crumpled suits, and then Communism was doomed. So to
those who say that Trump should become a “responsible”
politician, Max Weber would have replied: The Donald can only succeed
by being The Donald.